


My Darling, Emma

by ellacj



Series: 52 Weeks of Swan Queen [20]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Inspired by Poetry, Tragedy, poet!regina, zelena's there for like one line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:54:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3941011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellacj/pseuds/ellacj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Whatever noise is left in me will be twice as loud when I try, so I plug myself into the idea of going the distance and I amplify."</p><p>-Shane Koyczan</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Darling, Emma

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17a2DweqEo0
> 
> I use a lot of direct quotes from the poem integrated into my original prose; please don't sue me

_The failing use of my right hand_

_Isn’t actually the failing use of my right hand._

_It’s just another way to tell the time_

_And I’m ticking._

“Buy you a drink?” a voice says behind her, and when Regina turns there’s a woman sitting behind her with long blonde curls and smiling green eyes to match the wide grin on her lips.

Regina shrugs. “Appletini.”

The woman orders the drinks and she says her name is Emma and holds out her hand to shake, and Regina’s is shaking as she reaches out to take it. When finally their hands touch her fingers don’t quite curl to grip as Emma’s do, and she feels her face redden. “Carpal tunnel,” she mutters. “Joints are a bit stiff.”

They talk for hours and Emma cleans hotel rooms for a living, giving her youth and beauty to dirt and dust and she doesn’t know her family and Regina’s only got her sister and maybe they’re a little bit closer to the same than they thought before.

They don’t really start a relationship; more fall into it, fall into each other and Regina falls into Emma’s arms and Emma falls into Regina’s poems. Regina likes the way Emma’s name looks written in dark ink on her page and so she writes it again and again, writes it beside the most beautiful words she can think of, shows it to Emma and hopes to God she’s not moving too fast.

“You use the word ‘love’ too freely,” Emma muses one night with arms wrapped around Regina’s waist and a new poem clutched in her hands. “You should really just say what you mean.”

Regina thinks on that for a while, writes the word LOVE on the top of a page and when three-fourths of the page are covered in failed attempts and words that aren’t quite right she finally finds it and at the bottom of the page she writes it and circles it three times.

_I’m trying._

And that’s all she needs to do, Emma says, is try. When every day is a battle and every problem looks like a page she does her best impression of a pen, commits ink to paper and the worth of the words that come out determine her wage.

Emma says that she’ll do anything to make sure that Regina’s trying. Because giving up, she says, is the same thing as giving herself away to the monsters that attack the edge of her mind and dance just far enough from her consciousness that she can’t crush them beneath the weight of her love.

_We lie there like a pile of dirty laundry_

_And how we’ll ever come clean_

_Is beyond me_

_So we don’t._

_She says, “It’s supposed to be dirty”._

If there’s a word Regina would choose to describe them it would be messy. Nothing about their love is cookie-cutter and none of it would make it into a four-star romantic comedy but when Regina loves Emma and Emma loves Regina they can’t bring themselves to care.

_And if by the end you haven’t hurt me_

_Then you didn’t try._

Emma comes home one day to find Regina bent over a page of illegible scribbles smudged by salty tears with head in her hands and right hand quivering as though trying to climb a mountain. “What are you doing?” Emma asks.

“Teaching myself to write with my left hand.”

They hold each other tightly, Regina’s head in Emma’s shoulder and fingers on her left hand digging into her back. The week after that Emma brings home a typewriter, says they’ll figure out the rent money later but if Regina can’t write poems then what are they here for? Because Regina doesn’t write poems for a living; she writes them to live and without them she doesn’t want to know who she’d be.

And so Emma does her best impression of a war, tells Regina not to count her pride among the casualties, because maybe faith means never keeping score. Emma comes home with arms scarred from selling her own blood to pay down the debt but she swears she doesn’t mind, picks up a poem and reads it through and whispers to Regina that it’s worth it every time.

After that Regina gives herself over completely to the idea of forever, lets Emma hold her close and murmur in her ear and writes poems about her dreams that now include a blonde and maybe someday a boy or a girl tiny enough to hold their fingers in its tiny hand.

_She doesn’t leak_

_Unless you count the crying._

_She does that sometimes._

_Worries that she’s just a backup plan._

_My darling, [Emma]._

_I’ve lived long enough to learn;_

_Too many choices can destroy a man_.

Regina put everything she had into Emma’s hands the moment they met, the second their hands touched that first time, and yet Emma still doubts. Still fears that someday Regina will wake up, be broken from a trance, realize that she never wanted this.

The fears subside when Emma meets Regina’s sister, shakes her hand and as Regina watches their fingers curl around each other she wonders if she still remembers what it feels like to wrap her fingers around someone like that. Zelena’s eyes are shining when Emma leaves and she turns to Regina and murmurs, “I like the way she looks at you.”

Regina smiles and holds her own hand. “I like it too.”

Emma looks at broken things like she can make them new, and sometimes Regina catches her staring, watching her as she types seven-word-per-minute poems on a machine that can never erase her mistakes, wearing a smile reserved for those busy-making plans.

_[Emma] believes that distance is a fundamental_

_That can be side-stepped by a piece of string_

_And two tin cans._

_And I remember when my tin can rang._

The voice on the other end of the phone is muffled by static but it’s enough for her to hear them say it. There’s no family to speak of so love is next in line and there’s not a lot of time but she’s asking for her girlfriend.

In the cab to the hospital Regina’s heart bends as if bracing for impact and her right hand barely bends at all and the cab is going too slow, too slow, what if Emma’s already dead and she wasn’t there? But no, when she arrives the doctor does his best impression of the truth and spares her attempts to skirt around the issue.

They can’t stop the bleeding.

Emma’s body is so still, so opposite from the vibrant person Regina knew and the beeping heart monitor is slower with every minute and Regina’s not sure if she can breathe. But she sits down and does her best impression of herself and faces fact.

_And the failing use of [Emma]’s heart_

_Isn’t actually_

_The failing use of [Emma]’s heart._

It’s supposed to hurt.

_It’s just another way to tell the time._

Regina slips Emma’s hand into her own, whispers things and even she’s not sure two minutes later what she said, and her fingers won’t move to clasp Emma’s so all she can do is try to remember what it felt like to hold her hand. When Emma dies the only thing that tells her it’s so is the monotone pitch of the heartrate monitor and the tears fresh in her eyes.

She didn’t feel it happen, but when she looks at the spot where they touch she sees it clearer than the day itself. Hands, one too stiff and one too limp, clasped as though in protest of… something. Time, maybe. Love. The very idea of forever.

When Regina gets home the apartment is too empty, but when she sits down to her typewriter the words come so fast she reaches eleven words per minute and she has to wipe her eyes with the back of her wrist as worn keys print letters on paper.

_My darling, [Emma],_

_I was holding your hand when you died._

_And even though the failing use of my right hand_

_Prevented me from feeling you leave,_

_I tried._


End file.
